Resources (TE)
Resources in vary from episode to episode. As more become available during an episode, you must quickly adjust because your citizens will demand more. Dwellings require all available foods and all but one of the other available products or resources. Supply all of that, and there's a good chance your population will grow; supply less than the minimum and expect to lose dwellings, though it is not as certain as the game instructions would have you believe. Tutorial You start with millet (from a millet farm), raw silk (from a silkworm farm), and rice (from a rice paddy). Shang Dynasty China You have the same map and foods as in the Tutorial. Keep the foods coming, and while there's only one non-food option it's optional, but prepare your system to have weavers turning the raw silk into silk cloth for the time when a second resource or product becomes available, probably jade (or its product, jade idols). First Civilizations I Initial food is solely barley. Dwellings also need linen cloth (made from flax by a weaver) or furniture (made from wood by a carpenter). Carnelian camps provide a luxury bought by temples. You start with 8,000 coins. The Nippur Family, in Assyria, probably has the greatest number of resources and other features. Trade on the Nile I This episode starts at 2000 BC with very few types of resource (or anything else) on the map. If you don't pick Lower Egypt, which contains all the papyrus, you will have a hard time; that's a useful way to give yourself more of a challenge. Barley and fish The only resources you can sell to dwellings at first are barley and fish. A market that produces both is likely to see dwellings some time in 1998 and can reach a population of 4 by 1996, 6 by 1993, 8 by 1991, and 10 by 1988. A market that has only barley or only fish is likely to produce dwellings too, even if you do not use merchants to make any of the other food available. (That is at variance with the game instruction that says you need all the foods.) Offer the other food for sale to get more growth. Don't expect populations above 6 for the first 20 years unless you can keep the other food always available. You may find better uses for merchants than to try to keep such a market growing. Barley has an early demand building additional to dwellings. For a mere 1,000 coins you can build a stable close to a barley surplus (but not in the same market - best perhaps in a fish-only market). It buys plenty. Flax - no immediate sale value Flax farms are available, so if you can include one in a populated market it's worth while so that you have plenty of flax to sell to a Weaver when some of them appear in about 1991. Each farm can produce about 1.7 loads in a year. Papyrus reeds The other resource that can be sold initially is a pure money-spinner: papyrus reeds, found only near the Nile Delta. Sell them to a Barge Yard. Its demand seems to be not quite enough to cover the output of two papyrus camps but it can handle more than what a single one can produce. The Mycenaean Age I First Civilizations II As with the earlier episode in this region, initial food is solely barley. dwellings also need linen cloth (made from flax by a weaver) or furniture (made from wood by a carpenter). Carnelian camps provide a luxury bought by temples. You start with 5,000 coins. The Nippur Family, in Assyria, probably has the greatest number of resources and other features. One way to maximize your score is to have one huge city, because its population counts. Trade on the Nile II This episode starts at 2000 BC, like its "I" counterpart, with very few types of resource (or anything else) on the map. If you don't pick Lower Egypt you will have a hard time; that's a useful way to give yourself more of a challenge. There are two families competing, and you may have combat though you have an option, before starting the game, to turn off combat. The resource difference at the start is that weavers are in place so that you have even more incentive to include flax farms in your population centres. As you start with only 5,000 coins, you may be less inclined to build a stable early. Supply of, and demand for, initial resources The average annual production per farm, boat, or camp is: Barley 0.93, Fish 1.20, Flax 0.80, Papyrus 0.53. Average annual demand per dwelling: Barley 0.149, Cloth 0.021 (i.e. flax 0.063), Fish 0.113, Papyrus 0.78 Papyrus is easy to work out: three papyrus fields will supply almost exactly what is demanded by two barge yards. (Don't have them in the same market, of course, or they wil trade amongst themselves with no profit for you.) Unless your rivals are approaching, leave the papyrus growing until it stops because the price is too low, then carry it to a barge yard, where the demand price will be high, thus making a good profit for you. Initially, with few merchants, you may make a good profit with only one barge yard (which will pay good prices) and one papyrus camp - there again, though, leave the papyrus until its price falls a bit. Feeding dwellings is a little more tricky: #Market with one barley and one fish will support six dwellings comfortably, with a spare fish load every 2 years. #Market with two barley and one fish (a more likely situation because there are 20 barley and only 12 fish) will support ten dwellings, with a spare barley now and again. If you have more dwellings than that, you will want to bring food in sometimes. Keep an eye on the happiness scale and feed only when it's getting low, i.e. threatening to lose population. The demand will be high and the prices and likely profits will be high too. Markets with no barley and/or no fish are problematical. To increase or even to maintain the number of dwellings, you should be offering the missing food(s) nearly all of the time. This can tie up a merchant for years. For every two markets of that sort, if you want dwelling growth, allow three merchants so that you can have one at each market and another getting supplies in to take over when one sells everything. If you are fully exploiting all of your 20 barley fields, they will support about 118 dwellings. Your 12 fishing boats can supply enough for those, with a spare fish now and again. Sell fish in your competitor's markets? The competitor may be selling in yours first, and may even build roads and depots that you can use. Wood Around 1969, the (free) Woodworking advance spawns a couple of dozen timber camps (maybe none in Lower Egypt) producing wood, which is demanded by barge yards, dwellings, and the new ship yards. Now you may wish you hadn't gone so far into debt! The Mycenaean Age II "Dwellings demand olives, grapes, and wool cloth." Sheep farms produce wool for a weaver to turn into wool cloth (one load for three), while copper mines produce copper, which a smelter turns into copper ingots (one load for two), which a copper smith turns into copper urns (one load for two), bought by palaces and temples. Seafarers of Phoenicia The Persian Wars The Silk Road I Islam & Byzantium British Industrialization German Industrialization Tang & Song Era China European High Middle Ages The Silk Road II Indian Ocean Trade Rice is the main food (with each rice paddy supplying enough for about seven dwellings) but dwellings require a small amount of tea too. Cotton is abundant in most regions, along with smaller amounts of gold ore, herbs, rubies, and wood, from suitably-named sources; all of those need further processing before they produce anything that can be sold to a demand building. Guangzhou in the Far East additionally produces raw silk and porcelain clay. When the Europeans set up trading centres in Zanzibar, new resources and products appear. Atlantic Ocean Trade Roman Empire See also *Trade Empires Full Commodity Chart category:lists (TE) TE